When comparing Xshell vs Console2, the Slant community recommends Xshell for most people. In the question“What are the best terminal emulators for Windows?”Xshell is ranked 7th while Console2 is ranked 8th.

Pro

Can run any existing shell

Pro

Free and open source

Console2 is licensed under MPL 1.1/GPL 2.0/LGPL 2.1, making it free and open source.

Pro

Easy-to-use text selection

Console2's text selection is intuitive and easy to use.

Pro

Borderless mode minimizes crashes

Borderless windowed mode is basically a fullscreen mode but with a super fast alt tab option and seamless task switching without the risk of crashes or freezes.

Pro

Highly configurable hotkeys

Hotkeys allow the user to easily trigger an action and can be configured to their liking.

Pro

Tabbed

Console2 allows the user to create tabs for separate instances of the terminal, allowing them to have both multiple shells and multiple instances of the same shell open.

Pro

Dynamically resize window

You can change the width and height of the console window without having to reset your session.

Pro

Transparency support

Console2 supports transparency. You can adjust how transparent the background should be.

Pro

Supports fullscreen mode

Console2 supports fullscreen mode, making for greater visibility.

Cons

Con

Not free

The subscription costs $89 per year.

Con

No stable portable version

Any portable version present is wrapper. It moves files from portable folder to appdata and backward, which often cause dataloss

Con

Not maintained

The development of Console2 has been abandoned. The latest change was made in 2013.

Con

Stopping a script closes the tab

Usually when a script is running and you try to stop it with Ctrl-c, it stops and shows the empty command prompt waiting to get a new command. In Console2 this does not happen: instead the whole tab where the script is running is closed.